Crash Course
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: "Her gaze slinks back up to his and it's like a whole new universe has been breathed into existence. There's layers upon layers of copper and caramel peering back at him, the depths of all the trauma she's been holding so closely, the said and unsaid of what's building up between them." {post-S1 ; lyatt two-shot}
1. Chapter 1

_a/n : did you know that there are only 33 DAYS LEFT UNTIL SEASON 2 IS HERE?! GAH. I'm hyperventilating every time I think about it :)_

 _In the meantime, please enjoy this plot-less piece of randomness!_

* * *

From the moment Lucy first reappeared at Mason Industries - face stained with the aftermath of tears and eyes hooded in despondent rage - Wyatt had known two things without any hesitation.

For starters, he was in far deeper than he'd realized. He'd done one hell of a hack job trying to express it to her before she'd left, but seeing her return with that look on her face had confirmed everything he'd been feeling - and _fearing_ \- over the last several days. His heart was inescapably invested in Lucy's world and there was nothing he could do to extract himself now.

Secondly, he was ready to demolish the person who had apparently just demolished her. She was miles away from the woman he'd bid an unwillingly goodbye to just a handful of hours ago, almost unrecognizable with the weight of heartbreak so evident in even the smallest details of her appearance, which left him with an acute, unbridled need for retaliation. That urge doubled, maybe even tripled, once he learned the truth of what had happened. It was no wonder she was wearing such a profound look of loss across her face. Was there no end to Rittenhouse's shadowy reach into her life?

There had been little time for comforting her then. The Lifeboat was charged, but 1979 was officially off the table. The Mothership was gone and so were Lucy's chances of bringing Amy back home anytime soon. And for as much as the Carol-bomb has shattered Lucy's heart, it's easy to see that the blow about her sister has been equally painful. He knows from experience that hope is a delicate, fragile little bastard; to have it torn away so abruptly is a dangerous thing.

Naturally, Wyatt's first inclination is to sink his teeth into this situation with all the finesse of a rabid Rottweiler. He wants to tear it all down from every possible angle, detonate the whole organization, detain Carol Preston through whatever means necessary, and just put an end to this friggin' mess before it can create another damn casualty. Each disastrous jump that follows from there just cements his aggressive viewpoint. They can't keep going like this forever, and the best defense is a good offense, right?

Lucy won't hear of it, though. It's her family, her mom, her very existence that's at stake. She fights back, argues till her voice is raw, contradicts herself in every possible direction, then shuts down and storms off.

He storms right after her, of course. It pisses her off to no end, but he's lived that exact nightmare before and he won't do it again. He refuses to a let even the slightest argument dangle between them like a sore hangnail. She can give him the silent treatment for as long as she wants. Truthfully, she can slap him across the face for all he cares, not that it's come to that quite yet. But he draws the line at running away. He will chase and follow and persist like a damn gnat when things are left on a jagged edge between them. He'd like to say that she's a fly and he's the trap, but he knows that's a self-medicating lie. She's the one who has him ensnared. He can't escape her and he doesn't want to, so she's stuck with him and that's that.

But anger looks good on her. It's familiar, it's _them_. They've never backed down from a disagreement before, so they're well-versed in the art of quick, snappy bickering, but they also know when to give it up and meet each other halfway. The embers cool, the smoke clears...a look passes between them, and all is forgiven. It always ends with a quiet embrace, her head slumping onto his shoulder, their arms weaving together like a careworn tapestry.

It's not righteous anger burning like coal in her eyes now, though. It's devastation. The parade of ashes after a wildfire. The piles of debris after an earthquake. Fault lines, shaken foundations, displaced earth. He much prefers her anger to this harrowing detachment.

A few Rittenhouse devotees have opened fire on the three of them, creating absolute havoc in the middle of a developing town square in what will eventually be modern-day Los Angeles. Carol is there looking on at Emma's side, her mouth twitching with something that looks like disappointment, but that's it. She lets it happen. She stands by and allows those dumb bastards to use her own daughter for target practice.

She's not the only one who's become ominously numb, though. Lucy is frozen in place, facing the firing squad without even a flinch or a shudder, eyes never straying from her mother even as furious bullets clip the air all around her.

Wyatt curses an outright blue streak as he forcibly wrenches her out of their warpath. She doesn't fight him, but she's also not aiding in his effort, acting as nothing but dead weight in his arms as he flings both of their bodies behind a nearby wagon.

With a knot of terror wedging tightly in his chest, Wyatt grabs her by the shoulders and damn near shouts, "What the hell, Lucy? Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

When her dark gaze finally clicks up to meet his, her eyes are empty and unseeing, blanker than the hard granite stare of a statue. That look has him regretting the question all together.

"On second thought, don't answer that."

Her expression doesn't change. It's like he hasn't spoken at all. He's momentarily consumed with panic in the face of her eerie silence, but they're really up a creek with no freakin' paddles if they _both_ lose their heads right now. He shakes himself out of it by sheer force of will and rallies his brain back into the task at hand, locating Rufus and formulating an escape plan with what feels like one hand tied behind his back; Lucy isn't contributing a word, and that's definitely a major handicap for their team. Wyatt's always known that her quick thinking is imperative to their success, but now he realizes that he appreciates it far beyond the necessity of survival. They've crafted a tempo all their own - she informs him of exactly what they _should_ be doing, he counters that viewpoint with a few volatile opinions of his own, Rufus usually lands on one side or the other, and they all work through the mayhem together.

It's not the same without her. He felt this same void at the World's Fair and just chalked it up to the sting of failure and guilt on his part. It was there again when he and Rufus went to the '80s on their own, but he'd been determined to shut out any Lucy-related thoughts on that mission. The Jess-related thoughts were plenty loud all on their own, and that had been more than enough pressure for him to handle; considering anything beyond what it would take to get her home again could have very likely kept him grounded indefinitely...which, all things considered, may not have been such a bad outcome after all.

But the act of presently scraping a glacial-faced Lucy out of Los Angeles hurtles the truth of the matter straight to the forefront of his every conscious thought. He hates doing this without her. Rufus is doing his best, but he's not a historian. More importantly, he's just not _Lucy_.

They manage to pull through without her input. It's a little sloppier than Wyatt prefers, but they get the job done all the same. They're going home.

She robotically puts one foot in front of the other at half a pace slower than her usual speed, but it's enough to get them out of the 1800s and back to the twenty-first century in one piece. Wyatt and Rufus throw together the bare bones of a decent debriefing report once they've all changed and reassembled in the usual conference room, but nothing they say can keep Agent Christopher from angling for some semblance of a contribution out of Lucy. To her credit, she's able to provide the absolute minimum by confirming the facts that her teammates have already offered up, and once she's put her vacant stamp of approval on the whole event, she quietly asks to be excused.

There's an arched brow from Agent Christopher, a meaningful sideways glance in Wyatt's direction, and then she grants a brisk dismissal to all three of them.

He reads that glance for exactly what it is - not that he needed any prompting - and follows closely at Lucy's heels as she slides through the glass door and makes her way out into the hallway. His hand circles her arm, and while she doesn't slow down or spare him a look, she does inch a little closer until her shoulder is brushing up against him. It's the most acknowledgement he's gotten from her in the last several hours, and as small of a token as it may be, he finds that he's able to breathe just the slightest bit easier.

But there's no time to be relieved. Her forehead begins to crinkle as their bitter disaster of a day makes itself known in her eyes. It's like watching a thunderstorm steadily splitting across still waters. A ragged, half-repressed sob comes clawing out of her throat just before her legs buckle beneath her.

The numbing sedative of her shock has finally worn away.

Wyatt maintains a deathgrip on her arm, pivots to throw a steadying arm around her waist, and molds her body against him just as the first torrent of tears hits her fullforce. He guides her into the nearest empty room he can find, one that blessedly lacks those giant wall-to-wall windows overlooking the rest of the facility. With his back to the door and Lucy crumpled to his chest, he lowers the both of them to the floor and holds on with all that he has.

She tries to shake it off much too soon, her slim body still racked with messy, sniffling grief as she speaks brokenly into his shoulder. "I - I'm sorry, I - "

"It's okay, Lucy. You don't have to explain."

"It's just...I know - I know it's beyond stupid," she says with a thorny exhale, "but I never thought it could - could come to this. My mom - she's not...she doesn't care what happens anymore. She - she didn't stop them from - "

An agonizing ricochet of hiccups settles in between just about every other word she manages to squeeze out, escalating to the point where her own breathlessness prevents her from uttering another syllable. Wyatt keeps his hand moving in a constant rhythm up and down her back, but the verbal reassurances that _should_ be accompanying that motion seem trapped somewhere inside of him. He tries, he really does, but the truth of the matter is that he's just as lost as she is on this one. His parents were hardly the shining examples of unconditional love that they should have been, but even his shitty childhood is starting to look pretty bright in comparison.

In the end, he only has one thing to say, and he repeats it several times over to make up for his lack of eloquence. "I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm so, so sorry."

She nods against him with a batch of new tears soaking through the material of his shirt, sailing through one last cresting sob before the worst of it seems to be behind her. A minute or so passes, maybe more, and then she's lifting her wet face with a rueful look. "Good thing this jump was to the _eighteen_ -sixties and not the nineteen-sixties…"

"Why's that?"

Her fingers dance lightly over the saturated cotton of his t-shirt. "You'd really be a mess if a full face of makeup was involved. Looks like I still managed to leave some mascara behind anyway."

Wyatt shakes his head and grins slowly. "I've survived much worse, ma'am."

His voice has inadvertently dipped lower than necessary. Her eyelashes flicker a little as his hand sweeps up to rest against the back of her neck. He squeezes gently, allowing the warmth of her skin to permeate through all of the residual stress and concern that's been stored up inside of him until now. She's back, a bit worn and a little shaky, but more or less herself again. Consequently, he's feeling a hell of a lot more like himself too.

A sudden awareness creeps into her face. She's perched across his legs, basically sitting side saddle in his lap, and while they're often connected to each other by a hand or an arm or some other innocuous little touch, this is the most intimate they've ever been with the exception of one curiously earth-shattering night in 1930's Arkansas.

He can't get a sense of what that realization is doing to her, though. She's usually an open book before him, but she's holding back, guarding herself from him in a way he hadn't known possible. He tilts his head back to rest it against the door but doesn't release his hold on her, quickly registering the fact that she's not making any attempt to withdraw either. His hand slides around to her shoulder, then skips across to explore the hollow of her exposed collarbone, fingertips tracing gently over skin so soft that it practically demands to be touched.

Lucy lets out a short, erratic exhale. Her gaze slinks back up to his and it's like a whole new universe has been breathed into existence. There's layers upon layers of copper and caramel peering back at him, the depths of all the trauma she's been holding so closely, the said and unsaid of what's building up between them. Those eyes contain limitless poise and knowledge and strength, but also so much gnawing fear and aching vulnerability. And with that vulnerability comes enough longing to fill the entire San Francisco Bay a few times over.

He imagines there's plenty of longing ablaze in his eyes, too.

Sometimes Wyatt fears that he's falling straight into her with no parachute, like there's a whole world beneath her gaze and he's being pulled in - no, _dragged_ in - free falling through a bottomless whirlwind of tumultuous emotion. Her world just becomes more and more complicated every step of the way, and the more tangled up she is in Rittenhouse's web of deceit and double talk, the more tangled up he is in _her_.

He's afraid of what he feels. He's afraid that his feet are never going to touch solid ground again. This isn't what it was like last time. Jessica was a hometown girl, a sunny, bright-eyed beauty, apple pie and blue skies and laughter. She'd been too good for him from the start. He knew it, her parents knew it, their whole damn town knew it, but not her...she'd laugh it off, take his hand, and just like that, he was hers. Maybe that's the bullshit filter of nostalgia talking, but with God as his witness, loving her - even in the end, when the honeymoon phase was long over and the wheels were coming off - came so easily to him.

Not that harboring these feelings for Lucy is difficult. God, no. That's not it at all. But something irreversible is happening to him on a chemical level, like he's had too much to drink and it's starting to impair his judgement or a he's undergone a life-altering surgery that's rewiring his cells piece by piece. He's known darkness before, but her darkness is different, crippling, like a boulder pinning him down to the bottom of a riverbed.

That's the thought that illuminates everything else. He's pinned down, useless, adrift in a sea that refuses to be navigated. He'd chosen his own darkness when the world had collapsed around him, shunned the light, begged the ocean of his sorrow to fold right over and bury him in its unrelenting tide. The only pinprick of significance in his barren existence had been the drive to see Jessica's killer behind bars...or worse.

Things have changed, though. The curtain has lifted, the thunderous grief has receded at last, thanks to Rufus and Lucy and _time travel_ of all things. But now he's back in that place again; the walls have closed in, but this storm isn't his to weather. It's hers. That infuriates him to no end. He's surely earned his spot in hell long ago, but Lucy doesn't belong there. As desperate as he is to lift her out of this black turmoil, there's no clean solution, no conquering this battle without unendurable loss on her part.

He's so absorbed in the spiraling labyrinth of his thoughts that he almost misses the obvious cues. Her head slants sideways as it edges nearer to his. Those infinite eyes shutter closed. Her breath is warm on his mouth like an impending breeze off a darkening sea. And then, with a rustle of anticipation in the air, they're kissing.

On some level - absorbing thoughts notwithstanding - he didn't really need any warning signs to know what was on the horizon. Maybe because it's been on _his_ horizon for days, weeks even, always there subconsciously, playing noiselessly at the brink of his every rational thought. Her mouth commands his attention in even the most innocent of moments; here, wedged tightly together in a quiet room, with her weight balanced on his thigh and enough emotion crackling between them to supercharge the Lifeboat for a few dozen hours, there's no question that he's plagued with the prospect of her lips getting caught between his.

And it's so good, so _right_ , that he almost believes it's nothing more than a fantasy. She feels like an extraordinary dream whispering against his mouth. He nips at her bottom lip and is rewarded with a drawn-out sigh, one that scatters over his skin like a trail of gasoline on a wildfire. She grasps at his neck, his shoulders, maneuvering herself unhurriedly until she has a knee bolted down on either side of him. Her mouth parts with another sigh and he seizes the opportunity. Their tongues meet, click together, seamlessly finding perfect harmony. Wyatt grips her waist between splayed fingers, spurring her closer until she's hit just the right spot and he's humming with divine pleasure. She's dizzying, terrifyingly irresistible. His hand rustles up under her blouse and her hips snap forward as he feels his way along her rib cage.

That forces him to drop back against the door with a groan, heaving breath after breath with the severity of a man who's just finished a marathon. Lucy follows after him on a trancelike impulse, kisses his neck once, then goes very still as she arches away from him. She blinks a very long blink and touches two fingers to her lips, her own haphazard breathing filling the wavering space between them.

Speaking seems impossible. She's still in a very delicate position, straddling him and scrambling his brain with the dazzling pressure of her body fitted so snugly to his. He feels drunk, disoriented, content to simply stare at her in dumbfounded silence.

Lucy breaks through the clouded atmosphere first, her hand falling away from her face and her eyes sharpening abruptly. "I - I, uh, probably shouldn't have…"

"You were upset," he says eventually, gathering an embarrassing amount of effort before he can formulate anything coherent. "I should have been the one who stopped it. Sorry, Luce."

"Sorry...it happened?"

He wants to shout his disagreement, but once again, she's found a way to hold her cards close to the vest. He toes the line, feeling uncertain in the face of her expressionless regard. "Sorry to take advantage…"

"Take advantage? Really?" A tentative half-smile hitches up at the corner of her mouth. "You're usually far more perceptive than that. You can't actually believe that's what just happened, Wyatt."

He belatedly removes his hand from beneath her shirt, mouth dry and voice scratchy as he struggles to keep up. "So explain it to me. I don't think there's any blood going to my brain anymore. It's all traveled... _elsewhere_."

She gives off a startled little cough at that comment, eyes dropping away from him as a hand rakes nervously through her hair. "You usually seem to know what I'm thinking before _I_ even know what I'm thinking. Is it really taking advantage if you're giving someone exactly what they've been wanting?"

Wyatt cups the side of her face in his palm, bringing her skittish gaze back to his with a patient smile. "If I was a gambling man - and more often than not, I am - then yes, I would have put my money on you and I landing in a spot like this sooner or later. But you started with the backpedaling first, did you not?"

"Only because you were giving me that look again."

A strange sadness has risen into her face. It causes discord from deep inside of him, reverberating painfully like the clamor of a broken violin string. "What look? A stupid look? Because I don't think I was capable of anything beyond that."

"Not stupid," she murmurs with a minute shake of her head. "More like...skeptical, confused… unsure."

"Lucy..." her name leaves him like a sweet ballad, flooding out in a hum of tenderness. "The only thing I'm unsure of is your policy on sex in the workplace. Well, that _and_ whether I still have an ancient and potentially ineffective condom in my wallet."

She tries to laugh that off as she flushes to the roots of her dark hair, but the noise she actually makes is more like a surprised squeak.

"I'm serious," he says with a plying grin. "Speaking as a man who hasn't gotten any in a very, _very_ long time, my threshold for foreplay is startlingly low. There are days that just looking at you has me going off the rails, ma'am."

Her flush intensifies at that confession. She puts a hand to her face, making a half-assed show of hiding her bashfulness from him. "I - well, I thought we were on the same page, but - "

"But the confused look?"

Lucy nods, lowering her hand and tucking her lip inside of her mouth.

He has to curb a significant wave of desire before he can refocus his attention back to her eyes. "And this is a look you've seen from me before?"

"About eighty years ago," she answers quietly, "with Bonnie and Clyde. You told the story about proposing to Jessica, and then that kiss afterwards… It was like you didn't know who I was, as if you'd just kissed an alien, or a - a ghost."

Her voice just about bottoms out into dust on that last word, and it doesn't take much guesswork on Wyatt's part to understand the reason for that downward shift. "I knew _exactly_ who you were, Lucy. That's what scared the bejesus out of me. It wasn't supposed to feel like that."

She runs the back of her hand over his stubbled cheek, her gaze getting deliciously addled as she watches him. "I know what you mean. I've never needed to throw back hard liquor like that before."

He chuckles wistfully and leans in a little nearer. "That's saying a lot for how damn wicked their moonshine was, babydoll."

"You've got that right, sweetheart," she replies with a smile that's lukewarm at best.

There's no comfort in hearing her call him that without any of her usual liveliness. Wyatt presses his jaw against her hand, channeling his every last ounce of confidence before speaking again.

"Let's get one thing straight here. Obviously I bring a shit ton of baggage into this relationship. There's no avoiding it, so if we're really doing this, then that's something we'll have to work through together. But with that said..." he makes a grab for her hand and holds it to his mouth, kissing a meandering line across her knuckles, "...there's no mistaking you for anyone else, okay? Not in 1934, not now, not in a million years. Understood?"

Her face swims closer, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. His lips buzz lightly to hers and she dives right in with a devouring kiss that threatens to burn him alive. She sways forward and he cradles her against him, crushing their bodies together, his every nerve ending ringing out in languorous rapture. If this is what it's like to fall straight into her without a parachute, then by all means, he's gladly letting himself fall. She can pull him in, drag him straight into her whirlwind, take him along with her for every complicated step along the way. If he's going to be tangled up in someone, she's his first choice, his only choice.

He has to bite back an audible growl when her lips leave his, although the new feeling of her hands palming down his chest isn't such an awful trade-off.

"Wyatt," she whispers against his chin, her voice lamentably contrite. "We...not here."

"So that's it, huh? The workplace sex policy is a flat no." He tries to keep his tone light, but it's damn near impossible to conceal the landfill-sized disappointment he's currently experiencing. "Any room for negotiation?"

She glances pointedly downward at their intertwined bodies. "You've already negotiated pretty far beyond my normal policy."

"So why stop now? We've broken new ground, and you're the textbook example of an overachiever, right? I find it hard to believe that you'd choose to hinder such progress."

"This crosses over into recklessness, though." She offers a sly smile that hits him squarely between the legs. "That's your specialty, not mine."

"It's not so hard to learn," he responds with a hand drifting down over her thigh, "and I'd be willing to give you a little crash course…"

Lucy's gaze gets exquisitely darker. "You're serious, aren't you? You'd actually do this _here_? Now? No reservations, no objections...?"

His lips curl upward at the unguarded curiosity in her eyes. "Ehh, we're technically both here on contract and not actual employees, right? So - "

"Wyatt..."

"We can work around the condom issue, okay? There'll be plenty of time for the main event later, but for now there's - "

She grips his face in both of her hands, looking adorably embarrassed and exhilarated all at once. "There is no condom issue. I have that covered. It's the public and unprofessional aspect that - "

"Wait, what do you mean by covered? Covered as in you have a condom in _your_ wallet that's not ancient and ineffective, or - "

"Or I'm on birth control," she says with a humorless eye roll.

He clasps his hand more decidedly around her leg. "Interesting. Anyone I should be worried about?"

Her derisive snort borders on actual annoyance, and that's enough to temporarily quell the hot needle of desire that's been overruling his better judgement.

"I'm sorry, Luce. I'm being a total asshole." He releases her leg and chooses to tuck back a chunk of her hair instead, a fresh outpouring of remorse washing over him. "Even if we both want this, the timing is - "

"There's no such thing as right timing for us," she mutters with a weary sigh.

"Touché," he returns lightly, his fingers still gliding through her hair. "That doesn't mean it's a good idea to throw ourselves headfirst into something serious when you've barely bounced back from a well-deserved meltdown. I should have - "

She reaches for his wrist and holds his hand in place against her. "No, Wyatt...don't do that, okay? It's not like I've made any effort to - " she glances down again, brows up and cheeks pink at the sight of her body twined so soundly around his, " - to remove myself..."

A new swell of heat threatens to carve out his wavering sense of decency. Wyatt closes his eyes and lets the back of his head thump solidly to the door for good measure. "Well now would be a good time to do so. This self-control thing...it tends to come and go."

Lucy shifts a little in his lap and he swallows a grunted curse. He waits for the imminent retreat, the loss of heady pressure she's supplying, the emptiness of a dimming spark...

But he waits in vain. A sharp click resounds from somewhere above his head, then he hisses with latent pleasure as Lucy's full weight sinks over him again. Her hand sets a red-hot trail down over the front of his shirt until she's reaching for the hem and his eyes fly open.

"What are you - "

Her mouth silences him. She pitches against him, dauntless and ardent, consuming him in an unbelievably visceral kiss that puts a swift end to his question.

She answers anyway, her breath tickling against his lips a beat later. "Door's locked. Crash course is now in session."

* * *

 _a/n : So here's the deal - maybe there's a part 2 lurking in wings..? But if that's the case, part 2 probably can't live under the current T rating of this story, which means you may want to hit the follow button on this one since FF has the tendency to filter the M rating out of the normal story feed ;)_

 _as always, reviews are greatly appreciated (and often squealed over)_


	2. Chapter 2

_a/n: The votes are in - it seems one chapter was not enough, so without further ado, here's part 2 :)_

 _Please note the change in rating!_

* * *

"Door's locked. Crash course is now in session."

"You - you're…"

Her fingers are cool against his stomach as she skims higher and higher beneath his shirt, succinctly obliterating Wyatt's ability to speak another stuttering thought.

"I'm sure. You're the only thing that makes sense to me these days, Wyatt...if I'm sure of anything, it's you." Her smoldering confidence dies out slowly as she rocks back just enough to leave him reeling. "Unless you're having sec-"

He hauls her back in with both hands splayed across her back, lunging forward into a kiss that ends with him toppling over her. Lucy's shoulders are level with the floor but her legs don't budge from around him, still snaring against his hips on either side. The magnetizing poetry of her lips, her tongue, her body - it throttles his concentration. His hands are roaming aimlessly like vagrants without a home, disjointed in their need to simply be _everywhere_.

She sucks him back in with a singular focus when her heels flatten against the back of his thighs, urging him to pitch his hips forward against her center. Wyatt complies immediately, angles his mouth down over the pale skin of her neck, and lets his fingers graze lower to make quick work of as many buttons and zippers as he can blindly discover. A pliant whine rises from her throat as his teeth nip up to her earlobe. He does it again, relishing in the shudder that stitches through her.

"You like that, huh?"

"You're one to talk," she returns with a wobbly exhale. "You're so damn loud, Wyatt, and that's with all your clothes still on."

He smirks into the side of her neck, running a deft fingertip along the opening of her unbuttoned blouse. "Save the trash talk for later, Luce. It's high time all these clothes came _off_ , don't you think?"

Lucy wriggles her arms out of her sleeves without another word, face now flushed with something other than embarrassment. He matches her movements stroke for stroke, tugging his own shirt up and over his head while maintaining as much pulsing friction between them as possible. He slips a hand beneath her neck and rolls her body upward, searching for the clasp of her bra in a flourish of urgency. She exploits his distraction, fastening her arms around his shoulders and flipping herself around, bearing down on him suddenly and forcing his back against the floor.

If she'd been hoping to prove to him just how loud he really is, that move is one hell of a checkmate. He's groaning and cursing as he presses up into her, and that's when he hears a startling rip. Her bra is still clutched between his fingers and the flimsy little clasp that holds it all together is officially history.

He curses again, but this time it's with a tinge of self-reproach. " _Shit_. I didn't mean to - "

"Leave it. I have others."

There's a clever quip on the tip of his tongue, something about her supply of bras diminishing one by one thanks to him - this is the second one he's ruined since meeting her, after all - but she makes better use of his tongue instead, and he's not complaining about the alternative. The bra slides down over her arms, straps getting caught somewhere around her elbows, but he doesn't let that stop him from appreciating the view. Wyatt breaks the kiss with a pop, his pulse thumping like a jackhammer as he finally sets his sights on what he's been fantasizing about for too many goddamn months - the _front_ side of that stolen glance in a New Jersey jail cell. He's touching her before he even realizes what he's doing, fingertips sketching downward over the inner curve of her breast.

" _Wyatt_ …"

His name slices past her parted lips like the flare of a lit match. He ghosts his thumb over her more directly and her hips jerk into him with a low, whimpering cry.

He's excruciatingly hard and his restrictive jeans are doing him no favors, so he reluctantly abandons the source of his current fascination and transfers his efforts to the front fly of his pants. Lucy whines again, her mouth skimming his cheek. He turns into it, traps her lip between his, and manages a few sloppy, sporadic kisses until he can get his jeans open. He switches his attention to hers then, tugging restlessly at the waistband only to find that it's already undone.

Huh. He'd forgotten that he'd done that. He's even better at this than -

Lucy interrupts his short-lived ego trip with a frustrated sigh. "Wyatt. Off. Please."

He's never considered bossiness to be a turn-on before, but _dammit_ does the lust-ridden insistence in her voice ever push him off the edge. He peels the tight denim down over her thighs, growling out a labored, "Sure thing, ma'am," as he goes.

She kicks them off as soon as she can, and he doesn't waste a single second, too impatient to bother with pushing his jeans and underwear any further than his knees. His arm cinches around her narrow waist before shifting both of their bodies up to where they started - his back against the door and Lucy straddled overtop of him.

Surprise flashes uninhibited across her face as she grapples for balance. Her squirming sends shockwaves of ecstacy through his entire body, and he frantically tightens his hold around her, desperate to keep her still before she can bring an untimely end to the occasion.

"This - " she clenches her teeth, staring at him doubtfully, "- this is how you...I don't know, Wyatt."

It requires the use of his last few operational brain cells to slowly pieces together the fact that she's feeling a little hesitant about his choice of position. "Trust me. You're gonna like it."

"How would you know what I - "

"Because I _know_ ," he persists, mimicking the stubbornness of her tone. "Let me put it this way - if nothing else, we'll both get to avoid carpet burn. It's a win-win."

Lucy responds with a sharp eye roll. Oh god, even _now_ , she's going to be a never ending pain in his ass. She's on top of him in nothing but a lacy excuse for underwear, hair rumpled around her face, white skin on fire, just seconds from having him inside of her for the first time, and she's literally _rolling her eyes_ at him.

How could he expect anything less? It's a battle of wits, a clash of opinions, that same old quick, snappy bickering. It's familiar, it's _them_ , and it makes him want her all the more. Go figure.

Before Wyatt can even begin to formulate a suitable compromise, she's scooting forward and laying an open kiss to the corner of his jaw. "Okay."

And just like that, they're meeting halfway. The lace is shoved away, blissfully chafing over him as he angles himself against her, and then they're one.

He has to put his face to her shoulder to muffle the irrepressible noise that follows. It's been a long time, he's already admitted as much, but _holy shit_ …

She's too warm, too tight, just too damn much for him to handle. He fears he'll tear a hole through the inside of his cheek for how harshly he's biting down on it, but he has to do something to keep himself in check.

Lucy's nails rake through his hair, her voice accelerating with unmistakable tension. "You…okay?"

He grunts something that surely doesn't count as any viable word in the English language.

She fidgets ever so delicately, then makes a little sound that tells him she's less than comfortable. It's enough to reintroduce a shred of clarity back into his rattled head.

"Here," he mumbles in a bit of a blur, his hands hooking around her bent knees and drawing her legs out gently until they're extended behind him. "Like this...feet, uh, flat on the floor. Better leverage."

"Oh - " the noise snaps off at the end as she presses up on her heels and comes staggering down around him again.

They both say " _shit_ ," in unison that time, the sound of which brings a fleeting smile to Wyatt's face. His hands find traction at the dip of her waist and he encourages her to make another fluid thrust, being sure to drive himself upward right as she's plummeting down. Her head arches backward as they fuse together, exposing the graceful line of her neck, highlighting each shiny ringlet of her glossy dark hair, brandishing inch after inch of smooth, faultless skin.

A potent affection kindles in his heart as he watches her, moves with her, throbs inside of her. His feelings are raining down around him like a meteor shower, lustrous and pure and illuminating. He slants forward to catch her mouth in kiss that's soft, simple, guileless, almost qualifying as chaste if not for the way he's delving even deeper into her with the resulting shift in his posture. Her palm is slick against the back of his neck as she clings to him with a high hum of pleasure. She's rocking back and forth faster now, and he scrunches his eyes shut, attuning himself to each intensified stroke she makes, chasing that illusive rush of delirium with another jolt upward, another sway forward, another -

" _Wyatt_?"

He peels his eyelids open, automatically noting the frenzied heat in Lucy's gaze. There's a trembling uproar sizzling through him as he nods his understanding. He's there.

He's there without even realizing how far gone he is, and if he's reading that feverished look in her eyes correctly, she's just barely hanging on herself.

With one hand darting between them and another supporting the small of her back, Wyatt plants a series of hectic kisses to her neck, her collarbone, her breasts. Her whole body curves and contorts as he provokes her toward an inescapable climax, one that her coiled little frame is clearly searching for with a palpable, shaking ferocity.

He hears her crying out just an instant before his last vestige of restraint fades away into oblivion. He loses himself inside of her, riding out each blistering crest of release as it ravages through him. Every intoxicating sensation is amplified to excess as Lucy crashes and flutters all around him, answering each erratic quaking movement with a colliding shock of her own.

Wyatt slouches back at last with a heavy groan. He's depleted, totally blitzed, nearly catatonic. And he's happy. Absurdly, undeservedly, wholeheartedly _happy_.

He's still wrapped up in a radiant haze when Lucy fizzles out against him, her head dropping to his shoulder as her arms fall limply between them. It's second nature at this point to settle his cheek against the inviting refuge of her hair, and he breathes deeply as he lands there, gathering her even closer in a drowsy embrace.

"I'm never moving again," she drones softly, her tone so low and languid that she sounds drugged.

"Fine by me," he murmurs against the top of her head. "Mason's cleaning crew might be a little thrown off by that decision, but I'm sure they'll - "

Lucy tenses against him, her voice far more alert now as she cuts him off. "Oh my god, we're at work...we're at _work_."

"Don't I know it. I've been working pretty damn hard in case you hadn't noticed."

"Oh my god," she repeats with a note of panic, although her body is already slackening into him once more, the apparent horror of this realization lessening second by second. "I cannot believe I let you talk me into this."

"Me? Please." He maps a hand over her spine, running it up and down in lazy, indistinct strokes. "I had made peace with the fact that I was destined for nothing but a very long, very cold shower. _You're_ the one who threw yourself at _me_."

She curls her head into the center of his chest and taps a lone fingernail over his torso. "I still blame you. You made it impossible to resist."

He's barely worked his mouth open before she jumps back in to fill the half-second of silence.

"Don't you dare let that go to your head. It's already big enough."

She's not able to see his wicked smirk, so he deliberately lets it seep into his words for added effect. "Hmm. That's not the only thing that's bi- "

" _Wyatt_ ," she warns with a swift poke to his ribcage.

"Admit it. I knew what I was talking about. That was some damn good sex."

She sighs contentedly, delivering a riotous network of goosebumps over his cooling skin. "Okay, no arguments there. You were right."

"I was always pretty decent at Science, ya know. Or Geometry. Or whatever subject requires an understanding of angles and gravity. Maybe not on the level of engineering my way through the time-space continuum, but enough to know how to hit a G-spot."

Lucy chuckles quietly, the ripple of her amusement channeling pleasantly into him.

"Plus," he continues with the intentional edge of a challenge, "generally speaking, I know how much you like to be in charge, so..."

"Oh, as if _you_ don't?!"

Wyatt concedes with an easy grin. "Okay, so we both like to be in charge. That should prove to be interesting…"

"A good kind of interesting," she says with a glowing lilt in her voice.

"The best kind of interesting."

Her mouth flits lightly over his neck for just a barely-there kiss that hits him like an aftershock. When she speaks again, it's both halting and weighty, her head simultaneously digging even further into him than before. "Wyatt, I, uh...I'm - "

"Uh uh," he says with a firm shake of his head. He takes her arms in his hands and coaxes her away from him, not satisfied until her charmingly pink face is in full view. "There. You may now continue."

That lights a flame of inky opposition in her expression. "Gee, thanks for your permission."

"C'mon, Lucy," he prods affectionately, trailing his thumb along the tempting line of her lip. "As you were saying…?"

Her mouth lifts with a gradual smile as she circles his wrist in her slim fingers. "You're so annoying."

"Oh, is that all?" he asks with a laugh.

"Nope, just that." She studies him for several prolonged seconds, raw emotion filtering through her gorgeous eyes. "Well, and...also that I think I might be in love with you anyway."

He's sure that his flurrying heartbeat is flooding up into his face as he regards her with a paralyzed smile. "You think?"

"I know," she returns with an enchanting buzz of conviction. "I _know_."

"Good, because I know it too." His forehead bows reverently to hers. "I love you so much, Lucy, and I - I was so sure I'd never be able to say those words again, but it's not even a choice with you. I just...I - "

His voice cracks beneath the intensity of what he's feeling, but he doesn't have to flounder for long. Lucy kisses him straight through his mumbling incoherence, rekindling an undeniable spark of dynamite despite the fact that his body is still a far way off from rebounding back into action.

Any chance of that eventual rebound miraculously happening sooner rather than later is cut short when a timid knock funnels in from somewhere above Wyatt's head, a striking reminder that there's still a giant web of knotted confusion awaiting them on the other side of that door.

"Yeah?" he croaks out with a frown, tilting his head sideways to stare at the lock that sure as hell better not start turning any time soon.

That frown thaws of its own accord as he feels Lucy scrunching her face into his neck, her murmur of "Tell me it's not another damn jump already," rumbling playfully against his pulse.

It's Rufus who answers, and even though his words are muffled through the barrier of the door, his stilted awkwardness comes through loud and clear. "Hey there. Just checking in to see if everything's okay. I, uh, drew the short straw...everyone else was afraid of what they might, umm…hear?"

Wyatt grins a lofty grin, feeling unashamed and a bit self-congratulatory while Lucy folds up in red-faced mortification and drops a few muttered curse words into the crook of his shoulder.

"We're fine, man. Better than fine, actua-"

Lucy smacks him just as he'd anticipated she would, her own indignant words rising above his reflexive _oof_ of pain. "Thanks, Rufus. We'll be out in a minute."

"Uh, okay. Cool. Great. I'm leaving now because I think that's best for everyone involved. See you guys later."

Wyatt waits until the last of his footfalls have faded away, then turns his full attention back to Lucy. He works his fingers up through the tangle of her wavy hair, eyes darting over her with open adoration. "So what'll it be? Your place or mine?"

All remaining traces of irritation and chagrin are readily disappearing from her expression, dissolving into a serene, incandescent smile. "What?"

"Our base camp has been compromised, ma'am. We need to regroup and move out, and you're certifiably insane if you think there's any chance that I'm packing it up here just to go sleep alone tonight."

Her laughter cartwheels over him, brighter and richer than anything he's heard in a very long time. It's with a delighted kiss to his cheek that Lucy informs him that she'll happily follow his marching orders to just about anywhere - with or without a bed - as long as she isn't sleeping alone either.

Wyatt steals one last lingering look at her just as she is now, memorizing those layers upon layers of copper and caramel peering back at him, her dark gaze softened with the freedom of all that's finally been expressed between them. There's the poise and knowledge and strength that's so inherent to who she is, and most importantly, there's _love_ , more than enough love to fill the entire San Francisco Bay a few times over.

He imagines there's plenty of love ablaze in his eyes, too.


End file.
